Sports betting markets hide valuable information in places many bettors ignore. Learn how to uncover those clues and turn them into better pricing decisions.
Back to VideosFinding edges in sports betting is hard. That is unless you have a good map to point you to the real treasure. Where do you find a map? What if I told you Indiana Jones can point you in the right direction? Bring your whip.
Hi, I'm Jack from Unabated, where we provide software tools and education to help people find and place sharper bets. I've been a professional gambler for over 20 years. I've had plenty of adventures in casinos and sports books and have dealt with more than my fair share of people trying to stop me. One of the best ways to get an edge in sports betting is to understand top-down betting. And to do that, you need to learn how to find and use a source of truth. It's the thing that guides you to the treasure. And today, Harrison Ford and I are going to show you what it is and how to use it when you bet.
Let's take a look at how Indie found his source of truth in Raiders of the Lost Ark. When government agents came calling, they laid out the stakes.
Indiana had to find the Ark of the Covenant first and keep the world safe from Nazis with biblical superpowers. Luckily, he had an ace in the hole. He knew where to find the medallion that would lead him to the ark. So, he got on a plane and flew to Nepal. But you won't have to go that far. For sports bettors, the source of truth doesn't come from ancient jewelry. It comes from taking reliable information from one source and using it to shape your bets. For sides and totals, your source can be your own models if they're sharp.
But the easiest source of truth to start with is by using sharp sports books as a source to guide you to finding good bets at recreational books. Sharp books are your medallion. You just need to know how to use them. Indie was in Nepal because he knew his old flame Marion had the source of truth that would reveal where the ark was buried. The bad guy on Indy's heels, though, only suspected where it was. And when he got to the bar, he and his goons flailed around and set the place on fire. They're like the other bettors you're competing against. They want to get to the best and softest lines before you do.
Your advantage is you have a better idea of where to get those sources of truth than the competition does. And when they can't secure a quality source of truth, they're going to get burned. That's because the sharp books that work like your amulet are full of valuable, useful information that help you stay a step ahead of whatever competition is chasing you.
When sports books move a line, it's because they have some new information that caused the oddsmaker to re-evaluate their lines. When sharp sports books make their moves, that information typically stems from action they took from sharp bettors. Bettors whose opinions the books respect enough to adjust their own thinking. These can be big limit sports books like circa or exchanges like matchbook and bet fair in Europe or even the new crop of emerging prediction markets in the US. Recreational sports books on the other hand are more likely to move their lines because the sharp books did.
It means when you're looking at lines at a sharp book, it's often a more accurate idea of the true probability than what you see at a recreational book. You can take that information and use it to find bets at recreational books like DraftKings, Bet MGM, or Caesars. When a Sharp Book prices the Dodgers atUS 185 and a recreational book offers them atUS70, it means you get to buy probability at a discount. And buying probability at a discount is the only way to win long-term at sports betting. Your medallion is pointing you in the right direction, which is what happened when Indie went to the Middle East.
Now, the Ark could have been anywhere, but the Nazis knew enough to zero in on Egypt. By the time he got there, they were already poking around in the desert. But Indie knew something they didn't. The medallion could be used to show exactly where the treasure was buried. He needed to put it on top of a staff and place the amulet in the right spot to reveal the ark's real location. The Nazis only had a vague idea of where to dig. They were using an incomplete source of truth. They're digging in the wrong place.
You can maybe get close without a source of truth or with one that isn't sharp. But to find the treasure, you need a source of truth that is dialed in. Using sharp sports books as a source of truth is a start, but there are other ways you can hone your sources. I've come up with three practical ways to do it. For starters, you can learn which sports books are sharp for which sports. I mentioned Bet Fair earlier. They're a European-based exchange that's known to be very sharp when it comes to golf, but they may not be the sharpest option for college football in America. There you might want to take your cues from circus sports.
How can you learn which books are sharp in which sports? Now, these aren't the only things you consider, but here are some factors. Try to find out how liquid their markets are for that sport. In other words, do they take a lot of bets in that sport? Circa, for example, post their limits in the app. Most books will raise their limits as a market develops. They accept smaller bets when they first open the betting on a game. That's because they are less sure of their lines. Are you absolutely sure? As they gain more information, they start taking bigger bets.
By learning what limits books take and how aggressive they are in raising their limits, you can dial in on how sharp a book may be on a sport. You could also follow the way they move their lines. If you see a book you think is sharp, aggressively moving lines on WNBA games before any other books, and the market then follows them, well, that's another clue. Who can tell us about these markings? Perhaps a man I know.
It's easier to track if you follow an odd screen throughout the day. And we have a free one you can use at Unabated. Once you've identified a sharp book in the sport you want to bet, your next step is to see the fair price of a bet by going through the vig removal process. I'm not going to go through every step here. Seeing the fair vigree price on a bet when you're using a sharp source of truth can help you develop a precise target when you're shopping lines against the recreational books.
In a baseball game where you have lines from a sharps baseball book like circa sports, you can remove the vig from their price to see what the fair money lines look like. That gives you a target to shop against recreational books. You don't even have to choose just one sharp book as a source of truth. Some skilled sports bettors wait and blend information from multiple sharp books to paint an even more accurate picture of what the market is signaling. When you can do that well and create a sharp blended vigfree target number, you have a very powerful tool for finding positive EV bets in the market.
Maybe even as powerful as the staff of RAW. As long as you don't get derailed along the way by things like limits, this kind of top- down betting is an essential approach for bettors of all skill levels. Even if you do build your own models or you can handicap like a natural, understanding the way market works and what it's telling you is a crucial aspect of sports betting. But when you can master this approach, the results can be so good they'll melt your face off. The ark might belong in a museum. That belongs in a museum.
